‘Apocalypse’ doesn’t mean an end. It means a revealing. An uncovering. I don’t want any more people I respect to be angry about something I don’t think they understand. I suppose it can’t be helped. I suppose also that it’s in my nature to try anyway. Perhaps I am a fool.
The mindset of the bros in 2021 was ‘let’s play AD&D RAW and see what happens’. 1:1 time was distilled from that. The assumption was that downtime could be played out on a 1:1 basis in an ‘always on’ style. This was an assertion that proved painful, and didn’t really make sense in the context of the rules and the technology of 1978 — though I got a good laugh at the idea of a prolific player in Australia calling Gygax morning and night to adjudicate downtime orders.
But RAW for RAW sake was never the intention! The intention was ‘what can we learn from this?’. We learned that 1:1 time allowed a great many cool things! While 1:1 time was RAW for AD&D, it’s been applied AS A HOUSERULE to a number of other systems to great success. That’s not RAW! But it doesn’t matter. It produced better games than RAW for many systems.
If you’re trying to be a weasel you might say “erm actually it’s not a houserule because the rules explicitly acknowledge the passage of time and don’t provide a mechanic so you’re wrong. It wasn’t a houserule and therefore I was playing RAW”. A houserule doesn’t have to be a violation of the rules. A houserule is any rule not found in the rules. You’ve made a houserule by codifying it.
So going back to the RAW discussion. RULES ARE IMPORTANT! But they are not all-important. There are good rules and bad rules. There are good rulesets and bad rulesets. I know you would agree with that. And if you call it an X campaign, you better be playing by the rules of X, even with the caveat that some house rules can be a net good.
The adjudication of downtime in the same way as playing at the table was a bad houserule and a bad understanding of how downtime should work. We’ve all accepted that. I think adjudicating it more in line with ACKS guidelines or campaign wargaming is a good solution to that particular problem. Many people are enjoying that.
But TNB is something else. The theory at the time was that 1:1 time with total player autonomy and a neutral referee would produce situations like Braunstein, but it never manifested. It produced exciting games! It was a lot of fun! But Jeffro felt like something was missing. He concocted the Battle Braunstein! He forced what he envisioned into the world! And it worked. It’s been replicated. People love it. But he wanted more. The question of TNB is ‘what needs to change for these braunsteins to happen on a regular basis? Can it happen organically or does it have to be spoon fed and handheld into existence?’
Now that the question has changed from ‘what can we learn from AD&D RAW?’ a different approach is necessary. Jeffro saw specific instances running Trollopulous where the exact rules in the book regarding time and distance prevented really cool interactions from taking place. He eschewed that in Moonstein to allow these things to spring up. It was fun. It worked. But more work needs to be done.
When I tried to draw a distinction between Rule-Bound and Rule-Informed, I was approaching it in this context. Yes, by all means, if you want to play AD&D or any game and don’t much care for Braunstein, play RAW—it’s the right thing to do. If you like Braunstein, you can play RAW and run Battle Braunsteins to spice things up when you need to—and play them out 100% RAW. This was what I meant by Rule-Bound. You are placing braunstein within the confines of ‘everything by the book’. This is fine, and if this satisfies you more power to you. You have my respect for abiding by the rules and we can be friends. I probably like you. It just isn’t what I mean by TNB, and I think Jeffro and Dubs would agree.
Rule Zero is poorly understood, I like Jon Mollison’s explication of it, but that’s not what TNB is about, especially not the Rule Zero where the rules don’t matter at all. It has nothing to do with dice fudging, homebrewing, Free Kriegspiel-ing DM fiat. Don’t worry, those things suck and I hate them as much as anyone. I have got in fights and lost friends because of them. As stupid as that sounds, it’s a true story.
But RAW isn’t producing these events. It’s demonstrably prevented them in actual application. If you want these very fun braunsteins to happen reliably, spontaneously and organically, RAW isn’t going to do it. So what is? What needs to change for this to happen? Where do the rules need to be amended to allow this? What mindset shift needs to occur? Just as we were willing to impose 1:1 time on other rulesets to produce a better game than they could RAW, we need to be willing to impose new ideas on our current understanding of things.
Jeffro was not saying that the rules don’t matter. He was saying ‘specific rules prevented this from happening, and when I softened the edges of those rules it happened’. This is what I meant by Rule-Informed. This is not to say this is the ideal mode of play in all cases. Do not do this if your intention is to play a specific game. Play RAW. But I think if your intention is for these Battle/Session Braunsteins to occur organically, softening certain rules is far preferable to arbitrary imposition by DM fiat.
Mindset is part of the problem, maybe the most important part, but it’s not the whole thing. Players need to see themselves as opponents more than friends against the world. They need to be angling against each other at all times, even if the outcome of that is not immediate conflict. They need to be embodying Appendix N archetypes and setting up Session Braunsteins with their every intention. This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary and worthy one. How to inculcate this effectively remains an open question.
In conclusion, if you’re going to play a game, play it RAW! If your system doesn’t have 1:1 time, add it as a houserule! If you don’t like the way the dice are rolling, suck it up! Never fudge! Don’t write plots and storylines! Punish your players and grade them harshly but fairly!
But if you want more—if like me you dream of a braunstein that encompasses the entire game; a braunstein that never ends; a Total Nonstop Braunstein—then open your mind. Accept that RAW isn’t going to cut it. Accept the possibility that it might require changes in every area for this to happen. Accept that your outlook and understanding may have to change. Accept that you may have to change. And join me in my quest for TNB.